


Anchor

by nisachara



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Grief, Hurt, Hurt & Comfort, Loss, loss of a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 22:46:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11217816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisachara/pseuds/nisachara
Summary: An epidemic wipes out most of the young and old population in feudal Japan. Shisui and Anko deal with the loss of their second child. [A Samurai AU]





	Anchor

They never really went back to the grave stone. They never really went back to the row of _jizo_ lining that part of the cemetery. The number of _jizo_ had grown that summer, all thanks to the famine and the epidemic that swept through the land at the time.   
  
Well, they were still in the throes of it.   
  
It’s only been a month, just barely four weeks, and the pain was still so _raw_. It came about as numbness at first that continued on for the first two weeks or so. And then it was the emptiness that crept up on them and made itself so painfully conspicuous. Sometimes when it rained outside and the wind was strong and it rattled the wood and shook the trees, Shisui thought he could hear her tiny voice: her weak little cry that, despite how small it was, was a comfort during a time when they always checked in on her just to make sure she was still breathing. Sometimes it sounded so real he would go in and look, slide the _fusuma_ a crack and peer in, only to find the room empty and strewn with scrolls and ink stands and other paperwork. Sometimes the room would just be as empty as ever, tatami mats lining the floor and nothing else placed on it anywhere. Either way, he would be always reminded of her absence and the sound of her little voice would seem clearer in his head than ever that it would refuse to go away for days.   
  
Nanami seemed to catch on as well, though she was still too little to understand what it really was that was going on. All she knew was that she’d had a little sister for all of a week and a half before she ‘went away’ to where the baby cherry blossoms grew. Anko’s clinging to her at all times, the extreme reactions when Nanami would go quiet while she played, when she tripped and fell, when she even looked in the direction of the fire, when she was held so tight at night—Shisui watched as the girl grew to doubt her every move for fear of upsetting her mother. She didn’t understand; she was too little to understand why adults acted the way they did. She didn’t understand why, that instead of crying when they were sad, they thought she would run away or do something horrible to herself. And Anko had closed herself off to Shisui trying to tell her that she was hurting more than helping—and he understood that she didn’t really need that right now.   
  
At dinner that night, he couldn’t help but let his gaze wander over her, falling to her obi, now tight around her belly where she’d once carried their daughter. Only just over a month ago. Only just, and they’d been worried and she’d said she felt like something was wrong, but he’d put his hands on her and felt the little kicks from within and he’d told her that it felt stronger than the last time… They had allowed themselves to hope. Too much, apparently. And now it was flat, her obi tied neatly, and inside—empty.   
  
The emptiness crept up on them in all the wrong places.   
  
Dinner was a silent affair, quite unlike how dinner usually was. Neither of them ate much (and they haven’t been, this past month), and Shisui had to reach over a few times to squeeze her hand to remind her she still had food on her plate. Anko would pick at her food in response, uninterested. It was in moments like these that she wished he’d just leave her alone. Closed off to the world in the moment, she just wanted him to shut up and quit worrying about her.   
  
And somewhere in the loud silence came a baby’s cry: a neighbor taking a stroll with their little one, letting it get a bit of fresh air because that’s what they’d been told—to make sure the children got plenty of fresh air to strengthen their lungs. The epidemic weakened them so.   
  
It lasts for all of two minutes, and he doesn’t even notice that he’d been staring past the _shoji_ in the direction of the baby’s voice all that time. When the crying finally fades into a distance where silence creeps over them again, Shisui finally tears his eyes away to look at his plate. “The fish is good.” It’s a bland comment, but it’s the most he’s said all day to her. “If there is more tomorrow, we should make some tomorrow night as well. Before the season is over.”   
  
But all he’s met with is more silence, and Shisui has come to accept it, though he looks up at her as if to try and discern some sort of answer from her expression anyway. …But her expression has nothing to do with fish or dinner or small talk. It’s all pain and anguish and rage and frustration and hurt all mixed into one and trying so hard to break past the stony mask that was trying to shield her away from the reality of it all.   
  
And he notices the dark patches on her kimono, spreading bigger by the second, and Shisui heart nearly shatters. Their child may be no more, but she was still a mother. Her body still refused to accept what her mind was trying so hard to do. It reacted as it normally would, letting her milk down at the mere sound of a baby’s cry. And he knows she hasn’t nursed in all of a month and he knows it probably hurt…   
  
Hurt in all the ways he could only imagine.   
  
His chopsticks clatter against his plate as he scrambles towards her about the same time she abruptly stands and tries to get away. And when he catches her and presses her face to his chest, she’s already screaming—screaming into the folds of his yukata, literally fighting him.   
  
But it’s the first time she’s done this since their baby’s passing and he doesn’t want her to do this alone. He doesn’t want her to do this alone any more.   
  
So he holds on, tighter than ever, his tears making the fabric on the shoulders of her kimono darker.   
  
And her screams have died down to an agonized keening. He can feel her fingers twisting in his yukata, almost tearing as she tugged and pulled and pushed him away all at once. He can feel her try to punch him, pull at his hair, do anything. _Anything_.   
  
Until she stops.   
  
And she holds him just as tight as he was holding her, holds him as she remembers that he’s the only constant in her life to date that has proved time and again to always, always return to her. An anchor.   
  
And for a fleeting moment she wonders why it never hit her before, why it never came to her in the hours she’d been at her lowest. It’s all it takes. It makes it all the more easier to let it all down, to let the walls down in front of him and pull him into the grief that wracked her.   
  
And she finds that she can let him hold her up… that he wouldn’t let her fall.


End file.
